Toyah’s Blog: March 2025

In early February I was in Hull rehearsing NOW THATS WHAT I CALL A MUSICAL. In my hotel room at the end of each day I found myself searching pet websites for a white rabbit. It was evident I could no longer live without a bunny rabbit in my life.WillyFred passed away in 2016 and I have literally thought about him every day since and I still talked to him when I am at home.

Looking up PETS4HOMES online, I saw three brothers for sale that were 13 weeks old. Continental Giants, one white , two champagne. Every morning and evening I looked at the pictures of them, for the whole week while in Hull and thought I can’t pick one of these, I need to have all three. I booked a meeting for the following week and Robert and I went to see them.

I was so nervous and desperate for these bunnies to be right. Even though I hadn’t admitted it to myself I knew I was going to take them all. When we got to the address only two brothers were left for sale and WE TOOK THEM BOTH!

And our life has become chaos ever since.

I am the kind of pet owner who cannot put an animal in a cage. These are very large young bunnies, at 13 weeks old they are already twice the size of WillyFred. Eventually they will reach 9kilos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Now they are running riot around the house. Speeding up the stairs, climbing in pot plants, digging out the soil, they hurtle into my office, chew up this year’s show contracts, so far they’ve not chewed any cables but that will start soon enough.

Much to Robert’s stress they happily chewed our kitchen dresser…. seriously it’s a piece of wood and these bunnies are far too important not to chew.

For their first week with us these gorgeous little brothers didn’t allow me any sleep. I was up at 3am feeding them and cleaning up their spectacular rearrangement of their hay and food all over the house, mainly so Robert wouldn’t wake up to mayhem.

By the time I left for Dubai my head was spinning with exhaustion. Knowing there was no way Robert could cope with these two vibrant happy little souls on his own, I dropped them off at a bunny hotel for the eight days I was going to be away, because after Dubai I travelled to Edinburgh to open NOW THE MUSICAL.

That sense of being able to sleep once in Dubai and Edinburgh was incredible.  As soon as I go home the chaos will begin again. But it is a lovely heart-warming, furry chaos! These little creatures make me so complete and happy.

I am in awe of Trevor, his musical ear is incredible, but I never realised he had a humble beginning as a musician playing in club bands. It was transfixing to listen to Trevor Horn, Tony Levin and my husband Robert Fripp talk about how they began as humble musicians. I never realised all three of them had really paid their dues playing some pretty dodgy venues.

Tony Levin has played with the best since he began. He was working in an orchestra with Stravinsky conducting when he was still at college. But he tells a hilarious story of his early days turning up to a session for one of the world’sgreatest ever female singer songwriters dressed as a gorilla and smoking a pipe. Talk about misjudging a situation.On Valentine’s Day I was in Cheshire giving a speech on Dyslexia at a teachers conference. It was half term which allowed the teachers a day of workshops on dyslexia and other learning challenges that the pupils will possibly face.

It was a really important speech for me because I have a great need to express how difficult school was for me and also how difficult being in the music industry has been to me when I’m a creative who has fully formed ideas in my head, but my dyslexia means I can’t always communicate what I see so visually and so completely in my head. On the day the hall was full. I was speaking first, at nine in the morning and the average age of the teachers was about 22 years old.

They had no real idea of my history other than I had been on Strictly. They were a fabulous audience; I talk to them for an hour and I think I really open their eyes to the fact that dyslexia can create gifted children……………. if people understand what dyslexia is.

was a speech that I have spent two months writing, two months researching and delving deep into my own experiences to explain how necessary physical movement is for me to form thoughts and to get those thoughts out into the world.

It’s probably why I’m such an energetic performer because movement makes my brain work at its peak condition. As a dyslexic I can actually feel thoughts being blocked by the nerve endings not being fully formed or more accurately the neurones suddenly stop at a brick wall and I can no longer communicate what is in my head, it’s like being “locked in” and this was such an important thing to portray.

With a dyslexic person EVERYTHING IS THERE INSIDE THEIR HEADS…..it’s getting it out into the world that’s the challenge. At the very end of my speech I played the video I WANT TO BE FREE which was directed by Godley and Creme.

I said that the visuals of the video represents what it is like to be dyslexic. Most dyslexic children and adults have a vision impairment. My impairment is I cannot process black, it’s like a void, it has no perspective. There’s no light reflection so to look at black print on a white page for me is debilitating so in my presentation I put White print on a black page, and I said I can process that.

Then I played them the music video where I’m dressed all in white, all the props are white and I’m in a large studio that is like a black box. I played it in silence and I said this is dyslexia.

The frustration,  the need for creativity,  the need to break away from convention and just be myself and be allowed to be myself instead of having to conform to other people’s points of view and other peoples laws and rules.

They totally got it. It was profoundly satisfying and moving for me and the head of the school wrote to me the following week and said it couldn’t have been a better speech because every single teacher recognised what I said when they went into their workshops. They realised and recognised the difference between a dyslexic pupil and pupil who can cope in the normal education set up. It was phenomenal.  I have a confession to make. It’s about Dubai, which by the way was amazing.

Such an impressive city. The efficiency of it all, we were looked after incredibly well. The BLA BLA CLUB was fantastic, and the owner is a huge Toyah fan.After my performance which was relatively early in the day. I finished by about 5.15 in the afternoon, I headed for the VIP area.

To put the next bit of this sorry tale into perspective, I have been tee-tool for months, but without Robert with me I decided I was going to have a Margarita cocktail while watching the rest of the show. Tony Hadley was at one table with his friends and manager, the owner of BLA BLA and the owner of REWIND were at another table.

Bearing in mind I had not had a drink for two months; I thought I cannot sit at this beautiful beach and not have a cocktail! I had my own table and loved watching Tunde.

So I had one margarita and I thought this is really nice, I’m having a party on my own here and I ordered a second of Margarita. THEN Katrina and her wife joined me.  We had the most amazing conversations, putting the world to rights. Katrina has my full respect; she is a fantastic artist and a fabulous person. NOW I’ve never heard the term “to be Katrina’d” but Katrina ordered me another margarita and another and eventually the room was spinning.